Praying for the Pope

I wasn't a Catholic when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was installed as the 265th Successor of Saint Peter. I was still a few years away from becoming a Catholic at that point. Because some of my decision to enter the Catholic Church was based on my appreciation for the hierarchy as a means of providing stability and catholicity to teaching, I grew a warm fondness for His Holiness during my time in RCIA.

Shortly after entering the Church, I attempted to read the first installment of Jesus of Nazareth and was totally lost. His writing was far beyond what my capacities intellectually or spiritually were at the time and so, while I managed to read a good portion of the book, most of it was lost on me. I realize that even more so now as I am re-reading this book in order that I might read his new installment (which I am disappointed to see does not contain his exegesis on the infancy narratives as he had suggested in the Forward of the first edition).

Although his writing was at first, and still is to some extent, over my head, I owe a lot to his writing. While a novice, a fellow friar from here in Boston suggested to me that I read On Being a Christian, a collection of four Advent homilies given by the then-Cardinal Ratzinger while he occupied the See of Munich. It is a tiny book, only 90 pages, and I found it on the library shelf at the novitiate and used it as my Advent reading. I found that once I had begun to read it, I could hardly bear to put it down. It followed me out of the chapel as I poured over it, sometimes reading the same part of a particular homily over and over again, each time amazed at the depth and the richness of knowledge offered in it. Reading his works that Advent really reinvigorated my prayer life and set the derailing train of my vocation back on track. His works reminded me so much of why I decided to become a Catholic Christian in the first place, which in turn reminded me of why I became a Capuchin. I had the opportunity to read several other things that the Pope has written during my time in the novitiate and my fondness and respect for him grew all the more.

I say this because it seems like so often he is the target of unnecessary criticism from both inside and outside Catholic circles. Sometimes, I think that the Pope becomes too much of a political figure in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike when in reality he is a pastor, a shepherd, a servant. When we politicize his role, we allow him to become a figure of polarity, as a defining point between "conservative" and "liberal" Catholicism and in that way we allow the great symbol of unity that we as Catholics are blessed to have become a symbol of division and disagreement.

To his critics I would suggest they pick up his works, read them, study them, and understand them, because the man who emerges from those pages is not the man I think we can so often perceive him to be but instead a man who is deeply devoted to the Church, her safety, her protection, and most importantly her propagation.

Vivat P.P. Benedictus XVI!



Pax.